caesura

American  

[si-zhoor-uh, -zoor-uh, siz-yoor-uh] / sɪˈʒʊər ə, -ˈzʊər ə, sɪzˈjʊər ə /

noun

caesuras, plural caesurae plural

1. Prosody. a break, especially a sense pause, usually near the middle of a verse, and marked in scansion by a double vertical line, as in know then thyself ‖ presume not God to scan.

2. Classical Prosody. a division made by the ending of a word within a foot, or sometimes at the end of a foot, especially in certain recognized places near the middle of a verse.

3. any break, pause, or interruption.

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caesura British  

/ sɪˈzjʊərə /

noun

1. Usual symbol: ||.  (in modern prosody) a pause, esp for sense, usually near the middle of a verse line

2. (in classical prosody) a break between words within a metrical foot, usually in the third or fourth foot of the line

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• caesural
  adjective
• caesuric
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• caesurae
  plural
• caesuras
  plural

Etymology

Origin of caesura

1550–60; < Latin, equivalent to caes ( us ) cut (past participle of caedere ) ( caed- cut + -tus past participle suffix) + -ūra -ure

Explanation

A caesura is a break in a conversation, a line of verse, or a song. Usually, a caesura means total silence, but not for long. A caesura is a pause, or an interruption. In musical notation, a caesura is a break in the music, which can be a good time for a trumpet player to catch his breath. A caesura is also a break in the middle of a line of poetry. It is sometimes marked by a question mark, exclamation point, or period, as in the Sylvia Plath poem “Mirror”: “I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

caesura caesurae caesuras

This creates a medial caesura, splitting the line into two more or less equal halves, a technique famously employed a thousand years ago by the unknown poet who set “Beowulf” to the page.

From New York Times ● Mar. 4, 2021

Alone on the sea for weeks, Fox has a moment of caesura in his own life, and he finds the experience both rewarding and frightening.

From Slate ● Dec. 3, 2019

That is a semicolon from the heavens, you know, it’s like the most amazing caesura, to say these two things that are simultaneous and true.

From The New Yorker ● Feb. 20, 2019

Here’s a terrible piece of evidence showing that caesura in Twitter threads can be powerful.

From The Verge ● Aug. 3, 2017

And though such marked violations of harmony are rare, yet there is a large proportion of lines in which the laws for the caesura observed by later poets are violated.

From The Roman Poets of the Republic by Sellar, W. Y.

The sentence often flows on over stanza break, and finds its caesurae in designedly awkward places.

From The Guardian ● Dec. 13, 2010

What I mean, I suppose, is that this long infatuation is now a marriage — as demanding and exasperating at times as any marriage, and with long caesuras of drudgery.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 3, 2021

Sometimes he pitches language headlong over his line breaks, only to halt it, in the next line, by oddly scattered caesuras and slashes.

From The New Yorker ● Feb. 4, 2019

The greatest practitioners of the chapter have preferred to cast their divisions as fleeting caesuras with lingering aftereffects, scarcely memorable in their specifics but tenacious in the feeling they evoke.

From The New Yorker ● Oct. 29, 2014

A closer look reveals how carefully Whittier organises the syntax over his rhythmic framework: the caesuras are nicely judged.

From The Guardian ● Jun. 11, 2012

Cases in which caesuras and grammatical breaks are inconsistent are numberless.

From A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing by Bridges, Robert Seymour